r2*blog » design

Military Clip Art

r2witco — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 02:39:49 +0000

Just found a cool new resource for Military graphics.

Most of them are related to the Air Force, and quite a few of them offer a downloadable EPS file. This could be just the resource you were looking for to make more of those trendy badges you see every where.

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Another great image editing tool (Soft Scissors)

r2witco — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:29:13 +0000

Just saw this and really want to get my hands on it…

Photoshops’ extractor tool has really come a long ways in the past few versions, but it still doesn’t handle odd edges (like hair and feathers) as well as Soft Scissors seems to. At this point, I can’t find any info as to where or how to get my hands on this magical piece of software. If I do, I’ll post back about it. If you know anything please leave me a comment.

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Advanced Photo Resizing

r2witco — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:45:05 +0000

Really amazing new technology for image resizing. May not be that appealing to all, but to pixel pushers like myself, it’s definitely worth checking out.

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Typography in motion

r2witco — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 23:45:52 +0000

First of all, here’s a little background on typography for those of you who don’t know what it is.

Pulp Fiction Typography
Higher Resolution Version

Hey Ya Typography Short

Here’s a couple of links to other videos of this sort:
Oceans Eleven project
8 Rules of Fight Club

If you know of any others that fit into this category, please leave me a comment.

[edit] just saw this video and had to add it to this post:

My Timeline

r2witco — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:50:28 +0000

Here at work, we’ve added a new feature to the service, the Exportable Timeline Widget! You can export your timeline as a Flash widget, which you can then place on other websites and show off your stories. One of the cool features about it, is that it’s dynamic in the way that if you were to add new stories on OurStory, those new stories would show up on your timeline widget that may live on your MySpace page.

Here’s an example, showing stories from my life:

Start your own timeline at OurStory.com

And here’s one for my cat, Orbit:

Start your own timeline at OurStory.com

Isn’t that the truth

r2witco — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:44:08 +0000

How many designers out there have run into this situation before? I know I have.

This animtion has been floating around for a little while now, I decided to repost it for those who haven’t seen it yet. I’m not sure where it came from originally, props to the creator!

Return to Sender

r2witco — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 01:21:58 +0000

After researching a little on how to go about constructing an HTML email template I have come to one conclusion, “that sh*tz whack!” I thought designing things to display properly in all browsers was difficult, now I find out that most email clients are light years behind their big brother browsers when it comes to CSS support (if they support it at all).

Oh well, that’s what I get paid for – to solve problems (and if I’m lucky, make it look pretty).

Here’s a list of resources I’ve come up with to begin my research:

As I was saying, I’ve only done a little research so far. If someone out there has some better advise to offer, please leave me a comment.

For now, I’m off to that wonderful world of tables and in line styles!

gradients and colors without photoshop

r2witco — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 03:46:14 +0000

When in the heat of a deadline and you’re expected to throw together a layout, you don’t really want to be bothered with opening up unnecessary programs that just might slow down the whole process…

Here’s a couple of ways you can avoid opening photoshop just to add a gradient or get a color for your CSS file.

A List Apart has a way to create a gradient of any color or size with a .png or two.
(don’t worry, they have a way to get it to work for IE6)
Super-Easy Blendy Backgrounds
For you OSX users out there, here’s a widget that will give you a quick and easy way of converting Hex values to RGB, CMYK or HSV.
(or the other way around of course -don’t worry, it appears to offer a Windows alternative)ColourMod

What I read

r2witco — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 22:14:27 +0000

Someone at work asked what design sites I check out on a regular basis. After writing them back I thought the content was something I might share with those of you who who actually read this blog. So, here is my quick list of what I think you should check out on the web as far as design (and other junk) goes:

Here are the top 3 that I read on a regular basis:

alistapart.com – it doesn’t get much better than this. Some of the industries top designers/engineers giving top notch advice (for free!)
thinkvitamin.com – again, top notch advice from those ones who wrote the books and make it happen
wisdump.com – very simple look and feel, very in depth advice

If you are ever bored, feel free to poke around my del.icio.us bookmarks or my bloglines.

and of course, there’s always my outdated website – r2witco.net

enjoy

Firebird

r2witco — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 01:05:41 +0000

Firebird
~ collaged images ~